This Much Is True

At school, I wore my hair in great glossy bunches on either side of my head, and I was naughty. My hair was naughty, too. For the whole of my life, my hair has caused comment — sometimes envy, sometimes revulsion. Mummy used olive oil to try and tame it. It certainly gave it a shine, but it could have imparted an odour. I remember in the third form, Valerie Scott said loudly, ‘Your hair smells.’ I punched her to the ground and she had to go to hospital. Thankfully, she’s still a valued chum.

I answered back in lessons. When Miss Willetts came in and said briskly, ‘Right!’, I said loudly and immediately, ‘Left!’ I was sent out for that. Most teachers got used to it, and my classmates egged me on to do the things they might not have dared to do themselves.

In the upper fifth, I decided to stage a ‘dare’. I pretended to faint in the playground. It was a fine day, during our fifteen-minute morning break, after which everyone went back up to the form rooms. But not me. As I collapsed onto the asphalt and lay flat on my back, I could see my form-mates above, peering out of the windows, giggling, wanting to see the results of my ‘faint’. There was a pause while teachers were summoned. Miss Jackson, the maths teacher, arrived: ‘Get up, get up, Miriam!’ Then she kicked me and said, ‘Oh, she’s just shamming.’ Miss Jackson, who was an extremely nice woman apart from The Kick, was one of the teachers you remember. She was very tall, straight up and down, no chest or hips to speak of, legs like tree trunks encased in very thick lisle stockings, and she always wore a light brown tweed suit.

But I continued to lie there on the ground, eyes closed, in my pretend swoon. This went on so long that the teachers who had gathered started to get really worried. By the end of break, it seemed as if the whole school was standing at the windows, watching to see what would happen next. I lay still, occasionally moaning but, eventually, Miss Brown (biology — memorable for her extraordinary hair style: two sharply etched rolls on each side of her otherwise cropped head) who was wonderfully tender-hearted, came and said, ‘Come and lie down, Miriam.’ I had to lie down in the quiet room with a cup of hot water (I never drank tea and still don’t) until it was decided I had suffered no ill-effects and could return to the classroom. I was greeted with acclamation; and it seems everyone who was there remembers this jape.

Another time, in Miss Willett’s French class, I dressed up as a French lady who had come to inspect the school for her daughter. I borrowed Mummy’s best fur coat and her court shoes, and I tripped into the classroom, saying in a very thick French accent, ‘Oh, I’m zo veery sorry to interrupt everyzing. I am veery interested in how you teach ze French in ze school.’ I rolled my r’s in a pretty good approximation of a French accent. The whole class was writhing with laughter and even Miss Willetts tried not to smile as she said, ‘Come along, Miriam, you’re wasting time.’ To which I replied, ‘Oh, zo you do not vant me to stay? Well, zen, I will go.’ And with a flounce of Mummy’s fur coat, I stepped out into the hall (and into yet another detention).

On one frightful occasion, I saw a child bending over in the corridor in front of me and, of course, I rushed up to the presented bottom and gave it a resounding THWACK! The figure straightened up and, to my horror, I saw it was not a child but Miss Maddron (head of French). Miss Maddron was one of the special ones: she was tiny and slim, but carried herself very straight and wielded immediate and powerful authority. She wasn’t much taller than the shortest child, but taught brilliantly and had everyone’s undivided attention. The abject shock on my face was enough to clear me of any impertinence, and not a word was said as I fled up the corridor. I liked her tremendously; I wasn’t very good at French, but I did try.

Later, just as I was leaving to go to university, Miss Maddron told me, ‘You were naughty, Miriam, but you were never wicked.’ I hope that is true, although I remember once in the lower third putting up my hand in the biology lesson and saying, in between hysterical giggles, to Miss Keay, our rather buttoned-up teacher: ‘Please, Miss Keay, what are [snigger, snigger, giggle] t-t-t testicles?’ Of course, I knew what they were, but I just wanted to hear how she replied, which was, unsurprisingly: ‘Miriam, don’t be silly.’